The UK's charging infrastructure is patchy at best. At worst it is a confusing mess of incompatible standards, over-priced chargers, and woefully inadequate central planning.

The only time I had to hire a regular car was when ferrying my in-laws to the airport. The i3 is spacious - but not big enough for four adults and seven suitcases!

I'm firmly committed to EVs (electric vehicles), but my next car won't be an i3. In fact, I think it is unlikely that I'll ever drive a BMW again.

Cost

The i3 is a company car. My old employer paid for the lease, and I paid the tax on the benefit I receive. In the UK the tax rates for electric vehicles are incredibly low - so I was isolated from the capital cost of the vehicle. There are also discounts on the London congestion charge.

The i3 was stupidly expensive. It's a high-tech bit of kit, but I got tired of BMW trying to extract every extra penny out of me.

• Want a charging cable for your car? That's extra!
• Reversing camera and sensors? Extra cost!
• Adaptive Cruise Control? It's pretty nifty but you have to pay to get the entire interior upgraded just to get the steering wheel with the correct buttons.

Most other EVs come with those things as standard. BMW say that most i3 drivers are new to the BMW brand. That's certainly true in my case. But BMW's attitude to selling cars hasn't caught up with its high tech manufacturing. A bewildering array of options, hidden behind a website which barely works, each priced based on numbers plucked from thin air.

Getting the car was, frankly, a nasty experience. But it pales in comparison to the real horrors the car has in store.

Crappy Software

Several of the i3's features fail to work.

• Adaptive Cruise Control is meant to keep your distance from the car in front. It doesn't work if the sun is too low in the sky. Like, you know, when you're commuting. It also randomly fails with an alarming "bong" noise, if the screen mists up or it starts raining. Which brings me on to...
• The automatic windscreen wipers aren't very sensitive. Maybe it doesn't rain in Germany, but in the UK wipers are a necessity. Sometimes they just wouldn't react to the buckets of rain falling onto the car. Still, at least the car is easy to park, right?
• The auto-parallel parking is... eccentric. I know I'm lazy for not parking myself, but that's why I'm paying silly money for the car. Sometimes the sensors wouldn't see the gap to park in, sometimes the car would hit the kerb, sometimes the parking would stop mid-manoeuvre. Oh well, at least the GPS gets you where you're going, eh?
• The navigation software was a disappointment. I was expecting buttery-smooth 30fps animation - but I got a shuddery mess. The interface was painful to use and updates came through a paid for USB stick. I stuck with the free Google Maps app on my phone and had a much nicer experience. Even the navigation prompts came through Bluetooth. Mostly.
• Bluetooth is too hard for BMW. I got bored with all the little niggles with the entertainment system - scroll wheels which wouldn't work, lack of cover art, random sound drop outs. Small issues, yes, but when you're paying this much for a car, you expect a better service.
• Updates are woefully delivered. There's a 3G modem in the car, but you have to update manually with yet another USB stick.
• I've detailed just how bad the i3's web browser is before - so I didn't get that particular option.
• There is a mobile app. It's slow, poorly localised, and features some truly hideous design decisions.
• It is meant to send email alerts when charging is interrupted or the battery is low. The mails are poorly designed and sometimes come hours after they would have been useful.

Luckily I never had cause to use the pedestrian detection feature, but I have severe doubts that it would have performed as intended.

The i3 is an amazing car to drive, but it is a terrible car to use.

The Drive

Amazing. Seriously. It left me with a smile on my face after every drive. It is as silent as a ninja and as fast as... err... another ninja!

The steering responded to the merest touch of the wheel and the car leaped forward at the lights and left others in its dust. The i3 uses regenerative braking - as soon as you lift off the accelerator pedal, the car begins to slow down as it harvests kinetic energy to recharge the battery. Driven correctly, you should never need to touch the brake pedal.

With all that said, the ride is very stiff and bumpy. Great on motorways, but on the more dilapidated streets it feels like running in plimsolls. Maybe the average BMW owner is too rich to drive on anything but the finest surfaces?

I put 12,000 miles on the i3 in a year. Without a doubt this car is the quickest, most fun, and most pleasant drive there is.

Charging

The vast majority of my charging was done at home. With a 7kW charger fitted I was able to go from empty to full in 4 hours. Parked overnight and full in the morning. Perfect!

My employers were generous enough to install some free chargers at work. These were supplied by PodPoint and, I'm sorry to say, not very reliable. We were never sure if it was a poor installation, an incompatible car, or simply defective units - but the points would fail and leave some people limping along to the next nearest point. I was lucky - the 80 mile range of the i3 was enough to get me to work and back on a single charge.

When I started driving the i3 a year ago, there were only a few EVs in our car park - now it is full of Leafs, Outlanders, and the occasional Tesla. They're now putting in several regular plug sockets. If you're going to be at work for 8 hours, it doesn't really matter how fast your car charges, does it?

And so we come on to the sorry state of public charging. In a sensible world, councils and businesses would stick up free charging spots to encourage EVs. The cost of electricity is negligible (less than £3 to fill one up), but you could always recoup the money with a contactless credit card reader. Easy, no?

No. Instead we have a dozen incompatible charging schemes, each of which requires their own RFID card or mobile app. Got a card for charging in London? It won't work when charging in Norwich! Want £2 worth of electricity? Download our app, register, and pay £6. Plus parking costs!

That's before we get on to broken points, incompatible charging sockets, and petrol cars parking in front of the chargers. GAH!

On the plus side, the "Rapid" chargers will take the i3 from empty to 80% in 30 minutes. Frankly, after a few hours of driving, having a 30 minute mandatory break for food and rest is probably a good idea!

If you only drive within the range of your EV, it's a beautiful and stress free experience. If you have to rely on the vagaries of the UK charging network... well, you better start collecting a wide range of RFID cards and hope for the best!

I cheated and got the i3 Rex. It has a small petrol tank (9 litres) which can recharge the battery as you drive. Over the year, I think I filled it up about 6 times. Half of those were because I couldn't be bothered to wait for a charge, the rest because of charging failures.

What's Next?

As I change jobs, the i3 is going back. I looked at getting a replacement for my personal use - but I just couldn't justify the price. I've gone for a Renault Zoe - it's not as glamorous, but has a longer range and costs a fraction of the i3.

There are several EVs which cost less than the i3 and come with more features. Perhaps the Zoe's software won't be any better (it couldn't be any worse) - but at least I won't feel like I'm being charged a premium price for a second rate product.

The i3 is a disappointment simply because it shows so much promise. It steers itself in a traffic jam and can park itself! But you're never confident that the software won't crap out at an inconvenient time.

EVs are the future of personal driving. The cost is approaching parity with petrol cars. The range is already suitable for the majority of drivers. Charging at home and work solves most of the problems of poor infrastructure. The software is getting better all the time.

The i3 is a tantalising glimpse at what mass market EVs could be - but it falls short of glory.

In my blog post about BMW's unencrypted software updates, I said:

Judging from the files, it would appear that the infotainment system is made by Magneti Marelli with components by Wind River, AutoSAR, and Nvidia Tegra. Looking at the copious mentions of systemd and freedesktop it's a Linux system!

Hmmm... I wonder if they're respecting the GPL...?

I want to make it clear that, at the time, I had no evidence to suggest that any Open Source Software was being used in my vehicle. It was idle speculation on my part.

Anyway, some kind Internet stranger decided to fire off an email to BMW Australia demanding access to the source code. The customer service agents refused.

...customer must provide the 7 digit VIN and accept the usage rights agreement. Part of the usage rights agreement states that the software is protected by copyright and BMW is the sole owner. So in this case it is not subject to the requirements of a "Public" licence

BMW Australia

It would be an exaggeration to say "at which point all hell broke loose" - but there were some sternly worded tweets and comments condemning BMW for their abuse of Free Software.

Here's the thing - contacting customer services like that was entirely the wrong approach. Customer services aren't trained for the 0.001% of people who might be interested in an esoteric matter of legal licensing. Crying foul because a minimum wage rep didn't understand an obscure technical reference is counter productive.

A quick search shows a BMW Open Source site which is highly active. An email to them, or to BMW's head office, or their legal team, would have generated a far more useful reply.

As it happens, someone within BMW contacted me to explain where the Open Source Licences are within the vehicle. I'll be honest, they are well hidden - and not referenced in the user manual as far as I could see - but they are there.

Here's proof:

Now, this is a somewhat of a "beware of the leopard" situation, I grant you. But, somewhere in that mass of text is the email address you need to contact if you want copies of the code.

So, I've dropped BMW an email and will update you if/when I hear back. They may not respond - in which case we can heap opprobrium upon them - but let's give them a chance rather than flailing about and calling every scratch a palpable hit, eh?

Update! I've received a response from BMW.

Terence Eden is on Mastodon

@edent

As a follow up to last week's blog post.
BMW are going to ship me a copy of the source code.
shkspr.mobi/blog/2016/03/b… pic.x.com/kwa0wfcgcr

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I've sent them my details and will report back on what they send me.

We used to have separate categories of device: washing machines, VCRs, phones, cars, but now we just have computers in different cases. For example, modern cars are computers we put our bodies in and Boeing 747s are flying Solaris boxes, whereas hearing aids and pacemakers are computers we put in our body.

The Coming Civil War over General Purpose Computing - Cory Doctorow Emphasis added.

The i3 has numerous software defects. Despite having a capable 3G modem, all major software updates have to be performed by an authorised dealer. That means booking your car in and waiting for a day or two for the update to take place.

So, that's the major software updates, what about the minor ones? It turns out that the entertainment system can be updated by anyone with a USB stick and access to your vehicle.

The BMW Group allows part of the vehicle software to be updated, to enable compatibility of the latest tested Bluetooth or USB devices in the vehicle. This offer is available for selected vehicles manufactured after March 2010.

You can perform this software update yourself. To do so, all you need is a standard USB memory stick with sufficient memory capacity.

BMW Connected Drive - Software Updates

The website doesn't use SSL. I mean, everything is unencrypted including the software download!

The user enters their Vehicle Identification number, it is sent across to an unencrypted API.

http://www.bmw.com/_common/shared/owners/bluetooth/jsp/serviceV2.jsp
   ?op=getVINData
   &requestType=bluetooth
   &language=en
   &vin=1234567
   &domain=kisu-check

The user is asked to agree to a "usage right agreement" - but it's not necessary; the software is available to anyone without requiring authentication.

For example, the i3's software is available at

• http://www.bmw.com/_common/shared/owners/bluetooth/bin/UPD07012.bin

No need to guess a VIN or agree to any terms. Just click and download.

A look through the various BMW forums shows that software updates for different cars all follow a similar pattern.

Why Is This A Bad Thing™?

Because the software download goes via http rather than https, it is theoretically possible for an attacker to modify the file before it gets to you.

One would hope that the firmware is cryptographically signed so that it cannot be maliciously modified - but given BMW's fairly poor record on securing their cars (original in German), it's not guaranteed.

OK, what's the worst that could happen with a phony software update for a glorified car radio?

My friend Marc Rogers successfully hacked the Tesla Model S in part using the car's infotainment system. It turns out that entertainment systems often talk to the rest of the car via a CAN bus. If the car isn't fully secured, it is theoretically possible that a rogue internal component would be able to endanger the car and its passengers.

There's a secondary issue - car manufacturers are training people to stick untrusted USB sticks into their cars.

When FIAT had to update the software on 1.4 million cars, they opted to send USB sticks in the post to affected drivers.

Terence Eden is on Mastodon

@edent

Oh, a *secure* USB.
There's no way that could be malicious…
#antipattern pic.x.com/kqhtw51zq6

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If you receive a USB stick in the post, how can you be sure that it doesn't contain malicious software?

Hopefully, the car should reject any unauthorised tampering - but we all know that security measures can be bypassed by sufficiently motivated adversaries.

Decoding The Firmware

Alas, dear reader, here is where I must confess my ignorance. Decompiling firmware is way outside my area of expertise. If anyone with greater skills can investigate further, I'd be grateful.

Firstly, a quick run of binwalk gives us:

POSIX tar archive (GNU), owner user name: "01E40_110_005_010.xml"

Renaming the .bin to .tar allows us to extract the 7 firmware files and an XML file.

Within the XML, we find: <SWIP digalg="sha256" signalg="sha256withRSA" version="0.3.6" ... Which would indicate that the software is self-signed and probably secure against forgery.

Each of the firmware files contains a file called "bungstabelle.sgbm" which appears to be another cryptographic signature.

Judging from the files, it would appear that the infotainment system is made by Magneti Marelli with components by Wind River, AutoSAR, and Nvidia Tegra. Looking at the copious mentions of systemd and freedesktop it's a Linux system!

Hmmm... I wonder if they're respecting the GPL...?

The firmware isn't encrypted - so anyone can read the code and comments - but it does appear to be signed which makes it unlikely that a user could accidentally install corrupted software.

The Five Star Automotive Cyber Safety Program suggests to manufacturers that:

While updating is a necessary capability, an insecure update design could facilitate adversaries or trigger accidents. Authenticity and quality verification preserves the integrity of the updates and leads to a safer mechanism that can prevent digital tampering or unexpected failures.

From my limited understanding of the way the firmware is designed, it should be robust enough to prevent malicious users from infecting it with anything nasty.

However, given BMW's troubled history with HTTPS, I think it would be sensible for them to ensure all their software was delivered securely.

How much does it really cost to drive an electric car? Well, I've had my BMW i3 for a few months, so I thought I'd crunch the numbers.

As part of the UK Government's OLEV scheme, there's a subsidy for installing car charging points at home. One of the conditions of the subsidy is that a smart meter is installed which reports back details about the energy used to charge the car (aside: wonder if that's available as Open Data?). This means I know exactly how many kWh the car has gobbled up at home.

My car tweets its stats (thanks to some hacking).

edent's Car

@edent_car

🚗 5 miles in 24 minutes
Efficiency: 4.47 miles/kWh
🔋 100% (78 miles)
🔌 Finished (Full)
⚠ CHARGING_DONE
4,118 miles total
#BMWi3

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I'm with Ovo Energy (join Ovo and get a £25 Amazon Gift Card). They charge me £0.1308 / kWh.

MATHS!

517kWh * £0.1308 = £67.62

£67.62 / 4,118 miles = 1.6 pence per mile

ZOMG! That's half as much as I originally predicted! For comparison, driving a fairly efficient hybrid was costing me 10.4 pence per mile.

I also have solar panels - they've been performing pretty well this year.

I got the car in September, between then and now they've generated ~930kWh. A little under double my car's consumption. So, from a certain point of view, I've been driving on free sunshine ☺

Reality

OK... So that's the costs to me, but what are the real costs?

There was one major up-front capital cost (which can be amortised) - installing a charging point in the garage. The normal cost is ~£200 but we had to dig a small trench in my garden for the wiring, so it came to around £300. The fine folk at EV Charging Solutions did a beautiful job of installing everything.

My i3 has a 9 litre petrol tank which kicks in if the battery is getting low. So far I've put in less than a fiver of unleaded.

There are a number of free charging networks in the UK. I occasionally use Ecotricity's Electric Highway for rapid charging on motorways. Twice I've used Source London's chargers in car parks - that cost £5 for membership but is free for now.

But, the real subsidy comes from my employers. They're keen on reducing their employees' impact on the environment, so they offer free chaging at work. I can do my 75 mile round trip to work without charging, but more often than not I plug in for a boost (when the Pod-Points aren't broken).

As I'm an excellent driver (!) I average around 4.2 miles per kWh.

4,118 miles / 4.2mi/kWh = 980 kWh used

So I charge a little over half the time at home and the rest for free. If I were paying the domestic rate for the electricity, it would cost me around 3p per mile.

Final Thoughts

Electric cars are great! If you can afford the up-front price, the running costs are ridiculously low.

The only fly in the ointment is the proposed costs from some of the free networks. We've already started to see companies like ChargeMaster introduce minimum fees of £1.20 for their "free" network - that starts to make charging uneconomical.

Julian Kemp

@julkemp1

Sad to see @ChargemasterPlc admin fees for "free" EVcharging @asda. Not viable for a top up. #ukcharge @OLEVgovuk pic.x.com/7ubgsdqxhv

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The i3 costs around £2.50 to fill from empty to full on a domestic tariff. How much extra is it worth paying to charge away from home? At the moment, most of the networks are staying quiet on whether they'll charge per minute, per kWh, per connection, or something else.

Evfiretrax

@evfiretrax

Replying to @ElecHighway@ElecHighway @snfosberry @aminorjourney When will you start charging and announce your prices?

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GRIDSERVE Electric Highway

@ElecHighway

Replying to @evfiretrax@evfiretrax @snfosberry @aminorjourney That decision has not been made yet

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As more houses get solar panels and take advantage of free power from the sky, asking people to pay a premium for an electrical connection becomes an increasingly hard sell.

Look at it this way, if you had an oil-well in your back garden, how much would you be prepared to pay for petrol at the pump?

Can I set my electrical system up to divert surplus electricity into the car when my house isn't using it. This is what I do with my hot water iBoost - when household energy usage is low, it automatically switches on my immersion heater. Can I rig up something similar for my car?

I've been thinking about this - and I'm not quite sure that it's worth doing. Hear me out!

Here comes the science bit...

Most UK domestic solar installs can generate a maximum of 4kW. The i3's batteries have a capacity of around 19kWh.

If you install a fast 7kW charger you'll be able to completely fill the car in 4 hours - but you'll never entirely max that capacity with solar juice.

So we're back to using a standard 3 pin socket. Generally, chargers can draw a max of 3kW and take around 8 hours to fill the car. How often do solar panels supply 3kW or over?

On the best solar day I've had this year, I got 27kWh out of the panels - sufficient to fully charge the car from flat.

Edent's Solar Panels

@Edent_Solar
Automated

Crikey! What a day. @edent's solar panels generated ~26.78kWh, earning £4.74
FAQ: shkspr.mobi/blog/solar-gra…
#edentSolar pic.x.com/7cyemn4qvo

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But only around 4 hours were at or above 3kW. That's just about enough to top up the battery by half.

On a cool but bright day, it's just about possible to get 6-7 hours of >=3kW out of the panels.

Edent's Solar Panels

@Edent_Solar
Automated

Oh yeah! @edent's solar panels generated ~21.68kWh, earning £3.83
FAQ: shkspr.mobi/blog/solar-gra…
#edentSolar pic.x.com/ngpzf839s9

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Which, in fairness, would usually be sufficient to completely charge the car.

From looking over my generation records, days like that are a bit of a rarity.

It would be possible to hook up a sensor, like the iBoost, and divert energy from being fed back into the mains grid. But I think it isn't worth it.

Electricity is fungible. A Watt is a Watt. It doesn't really make much difference whether it comes from the panels or the grid. If I generate 18kWh during the day, and I charge my car with the same amount, it doesn't matter if those two events occur simultaneously.

In the UK, exporting electricity attracts a fixed rate payment (of around 4p/kWh) based on 50% of generation. That is, there is no export meter. So whether the electricity flows back into the grid or not, you still get paid.

In terms of cost, I pay around 13p/kWh from Ovo Energy. The total cost to fill the car is around £2.50.

So...

• If the day is sunny enough to generate 18kWh...
• and if I can match the rate of generation to the rate of charge...
• and if I don't need the energy for anything else...

...then my electricity meter will be at a standstill and I will be charging for free and have saved myself £2.50.

More realistically, I'll probably be charging half my battery - so the savings are around £1.25 per charge (which won't be every day).

So, while direct charging would be theoretically cheaper, in practice it doesn't make enough difference to offset the cost of buying the equipment to make it work, nor is it worth the risk to the electronics of constantly stopping and starting the charging. In addition, it can be a bit inconvenient not knowing when the car will be fully charged.

Therefore, my plan is...

1. If it looks to be a nice sunny day and I'm not in a rush, use the standard lead to charge up throughout the day.
2. For the rest of the time, use the fast charger. Preferably around midday to offset some of the energy use.

(NB - if you're on an Economy 7 tariff with cheaper electricity at night - it may be worth just charging overnight.)

In summary - if you have solar panels and an electric car, don't worry too much about matching your charging time to your generation time.

But first, and brief diversion into PHYSICS and MATHS!

Physics

Imagine a kilogram weight (1Kg) sat on an ice rink. You want to push the object 1 metre. The energy you require to accomplish this is 1 Joule.

If you want to impart 1 Joule per second, that will take 1 Watt (1W).

Imagine a 100 Watt lightbulb - the old incandescent type - every second it is using 100 Watts. Run it for an hour and it has used 100 Watt hours (100Wh). Run it for 10 hours, and it will have used 1,000 Watt hours, or 1kWh.

Ok? Onwards!

Maths

My previous car - a Toyota Yaris Hybrid - had a 35 litre fuel tank which could take me around 420 miles.

420 miles / 35 litres = 12 MPL

1 mile per UK gallon = 0.22 miles per litre (Americans - our gallons are bigger than your gallons!)

12 / .22 = 55MPG

Based on my driving style and cost of fuel, we can work out the cost-per-mile.

To fill up a tank:

35 litres * £1.26 = £44

Here's how much fuel costs to drive per mile:

£44 / 420 miles = £0.105/mile.

(Fuel costs in the UK have fallen recently, but £1.26 was the average over the last 3 years.)

How does this compare to an electric car? I'm with Ovo Energy and my electricity costs roughly £0.13 per kWh.

The i3 has a usable battery of 18.8kWh. Therefore, the total cost to filling up is

18.8 kWh * £0.13 = £2.45

That's a cheap charge! But how far does it get us?

Range on an i3 is a slightly confusing affair. If I'm pootling around town and don't have any heating or air-conditioning on, it will happily do around 100 miles.

In the dead of winter, with the heat on full blast, driving up hill all both ways, and with your foot constantly on the pedal, it looks like it will do about 50 miles.

For all of the journeys I've done, it looks like around 88 miles per full charge. Let's call that 80 miles for simplicity.

£2.45 / 80 miles = £0.03 per mile

Yup, a thruppenny bit per mile when charging from a socket in a garage. Costs elsewhere may be higher - more on that later.

This tallies with the stats generated by the app.

I get 4.3 miles per kWh.

4.3 miles * 18.8 kWh = 80 miles per full charge

When I'm working from home, I can charge the car directly off my solar panels.

So, on a good day, I can charge my car for free - then rest smug in realisation that I'm literally...

Ok! On to the review!

Review

Let's get this out of the way first, the i3 has shockingly poor software. Car manufacturers are very good at hardware, but the usability and functionality of the software are at least a decade behine the state-of-the-art. Many of the problems with this otherwise brilliant car could be rectified with a software update. Whether BMW has the guts to radically improve its offering is another matter.

There is an app which comes with the car (Android and iOS) - again, it's poorly constructed and only offers limited access to some of the essential features of the car. More on that later.

The second thing to mention is the cost. This is a company car, so the real cost is obscured from me. It's a pricey car and BMW are incredibly stingy with what they include with it. If you want some of the smart driving features - and they are essential - you have to pay for an upgraded interior. Why? Because that's the only way to get the upgraded steering wheel!

One of the joys of the i3 is that it has a "Rapid Charge" port - pump pure DC into your car for a charge in 30 minutes. That's an extra cost.

Want to charge at public port? BMW only supply a regular 3 pin charging plug. They'll sell you the appropriate cable for £160. Or you can buy a third party cable for £130.

The base model does come with GPS maps (updated quarterly) and basic remote control connectivity - but if you want web access, traffic reports, or anything else - be prepared to pay. Personally, I just use Google Maps on my phone - they're more usable and accurate than BMW's offering.

Finally, lights. By default, the car comes with power-hungry halogen headlights. Want efficient LEDs? Another six-hundred quid, guvnor! Ok, so efficient LEDs only add about 1% to the range, but surely that's the sort of thing which should be built in as standard?

Overall, it makes buying the car a frustrating and expensive experience.

Set Up

Ok, so you've got your car. Time to crack open the manual! I really wouldn't bother. BMW have put the least amount of effort into this as possible. A dull, black and white tome which shows a left-hand-drive model despite the UK being a right-hand-drive country. The index at the back is simply wrong, sending you on a wild-goose chase to pages which bear no relevance to the topic at hand. Your best bet is doing an Internet search for your question and hoping someone else has figured it out first.

I think Kathy Sierra said it best:

Why doesn't the manual look as good as the brochure? Why has all the effort gone into convincing me to buy this car - but no effort in making my first experience with it delightful?

Ah well. It's reasonably obvious how everything works. If you're the sort of person who enjoys systematically pressing every button and creating a mental map of where every function is, you'll be fine. I imagine everyone else just leaves the defaults as they are and gets frustrated that they can't see the time on the dashboard (press the "DC" button repeatedly) or turn off the traffic reports (not controlled in a "Radio" settings, but by double tapping the aerial button near the volume control).

A word on that volume control, and the heating control, they're on the left hand side. Yup! This car was designed for those who drive on the wrong side of the road! Most modern vehicles integrate an ambidextrous design which can be used by LHD or RHD drivers. Not this car! I'm a long-limbed guy, and I find some of the more common dials just a little too far away to be comfortable.

This does have the side effect of making the Bluetooth "Skip Track" buttons more reachable. Because the jog-dial on the steering wheel only works with the radio - it doesn't work with Bluetooth devices. Because software is hard.

While I'm on the subject of Bluetooth - it connects just fine to my phone. I can stream audio and make handsfree phone calls. BMW are keen to sell you an extra Bluetooth option which, as far as I can tell, just allows you to connect multiple phones and send basic emails from your dashboard. I avoided that. Of note, there are two "cigar" charging ports in the car. One just under the dash and one in the centre console. So you can plug in and charge multiple devices. There's also a standard USB port if you want to play MP3s that way.

The standard sound option is perfect. You can pay extra (of course) for better speakers - but all the music and podcasts I've played sound great. Because there's no engine noise, you don't need the sound up quite so high.

You get FM and DAB radio - although the interface for accessing them is quite confusing. There's also a hidden AM radio which you can unlock if you're willing to hack your car. Apparently the engine interferes with weak AM signals, which is why it is disabled by default.

I've mentioned on this blog before about OBD ports on cars. The i3's is under the steering wheel and to the left. Here's a picture with a Bluetooth OBD dongle plugged in. I've not managed to get the port to do anything interesting... yet!

App

It's clear that BMW aren't app designers. What's less clear is why they refuse to open up their APIs to let real developers create innovative and useful services.

Terence Eden is on Mastodon

@edent

Replying to @BMW_UK@BMW_UK good morning! I've just got an i3. I would love to develop apps for it. Is there an API for ConnectedDrive?

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BMW UK

@BMW_UK

Replying to @edent@edent Hi Terence, due to a number of factors we can't open our API's up to develop for our i3 platform at present..

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Terence Eden is on Mastodon

@edent

Replying to @BMW@BMW any news on when the api will be available again? Going to a hackathon this weekend - would love to show off the i3 at @overtheair.

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BMW

@BMW

Replying to @edent@edent Hi Terence, we're sorry but we cannot comment on future offers at the moment. We hope for your understanding in this matter.

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The app forces its own PIN lock. You may protect your phone will all manner of biometric security features, but BMW insist on having yet another PIN. If you flip out of the app and then straight back, you need to input the PIN again. Mine's 1234.

The thing is... there's such a limited range of things to do with the app, it doesn't really warrant extra protection. You can...

• See stats about your driving style.
• See charge and battery status.
• See if windows and doors are locked.
• See the car's location and send destinations to the GPS.
• Toggle some basic remote control features (lock, unlock, flash headlights)
• Tell the car when to charge and when to precondition the cabin.

That's it. Here's a quick list of things which would be actually useful. I thought of them after playing with the app for 10 minutes.

• Receive push notifications when the battery is full.
• Push notifications if the battery stops charging unexpectedly. (eg, someone has unplugged it.)
• Start and stop charging.
• Set the cabin temperature. The current preconditioning function only works with the temperature you last set. So if you drove to work in the cold, but you're parked in a sun trap, you currently can't switch on the AC.
• Shut the windows via remote.
• Perhaps video stream from the front & rear cameras.
• Deploy or collapse the wing mirrors.
• Tweak any of the software settings.

I'm sure there's a couple of dozen useful things that it could do - it just feels like BMW has done the bare minimum needed to make the car qualify as "smart".

You can read the i3's API documentation - but you can't do anything with it?

The Drive

It's fun - there's no doubt about it. The electric engine has instant torque, so you really get thrown back in your seat when you hammer it. For overtaking it's amazing. Incredibly responsive, the lightest touch will have it respond to your desires. The turning circle is amazingly small - you don't need to a 3 point turn, just yank the wheel all the way.

There's an electronic handbrake - you just press a button and it engages. You don't even need to disengage it manually - just start driving. Excellent!

Adaptive cruise control is magic - the car will keep its distance from the car in front of you. If they slow down, the cruise control automagically brakes. Brilliant!

The enhanced features like auto-parallel-parking are uncanny - hold down a button and the car takes over power and steering. Similarly, when using Traffic Jam Assist the car will drive itself - accelerating up to 35 MPH and sticking to its assigned lane. Actual witchcraft!

Of course, the car is silent when driving. Make sure you wind down your windows so you can yell at oblivious pedestrians. The car will also automatically detect "obstacles" like people and bicycles. I've not had an near-misses, so can't comment on how well that feature works.

Because the engine is silent, you really notice the road noise - that's not a criticism, just be aware that you won't be in a silent bubble if you're going down the motorway.

The i3 uses regenerative braking. As you slow down, the battery begins to charge - nifty! This means that if you take your foot off the accelerator, the car acts as if you've tapped the brakes. It takes a little getting used to, but after a week I think I've mastered the art of one-footed-driving. It's a pleasant experience

I only have three criticisms of the drive:

1. The suspension is a bit hard. It really does pick up a lot of the imperfections in the road. It's bumpy but not uncomfortable.
2. The mirror is a little small. This might be because I'm used to this giant Android Dashcam. It's perfectly serviceable - just a little cramped.
3. The software...

sigh Back to this point again. The adaptive cruise control has a habit of shutting off when it can't see the road ahead. That's fair enough - but it seems particularly badly affected by the sun low in the horizon. As it often is when commuting. It's not possible to tell when it's ready to be used again - so you find yourself habitually jabbing the button until it suddenly works.

It also doesn't cope with traffic lights or roundabout particularly well. Of course, one should concentrate on the road, but I found it common for the car to suddenly automatically accelerate towards a red light. As long as you don't use it for a substitute for paying attention, it's fine.

There are other software oddities. You need to turn on automatic windscreen wipers every time. Most cars have a physical switch, the i3 has a software toggle. Annoying.

The dashboard will tell you the speed limit for the road you're on. This seems to be controlled via a database in the car's GPS system - although it will pick up some temporary restrictions. It also "helpfully" makes a noise when you've accidentally gone over the limit.

There are three driving styles you can pick from - they control how quickly you can accelerate, the car's top speed, and whether the climate controls are on. Fiddling with them changes the range indicator on the dash - so you can see how many miles the air-conditioner costs you. On the most economical mode, acceleration is dampened, but you can override it by flooring the pedal.

But, at the end of the day, when all's said and done, what it comes down to, as a game of two halves - is that it's an exceptionally good car. Nippy, relaxed, and mostly easy to use. Whether it's zipping around town, cruising on a motorway, or sat in traffic, it's a pleasure to drive.

Charging

Broadly speaking, there are three ways to charge the i3. All systems will charge quickly to 80% and then slow down as they reach 100%.

1. 3 pin domestic socket. 8 hours to charge to 80% from empty. Cable comes with the car.
2. Type 2 Mennekes (Fast Charger). Will charge in 4 hours. There's a UK Government grant to install the chargers in your home. Requires a separate cable. Some chargers have a teathered cable.
3. CCS - the Combined Charging System (Rapid Charger). Takes 30 minutes to charge. Cables are always teathered to the charging unit.

Really the only downside to charging is that the cables tend to drag along the ground - which means they can get a little dirty. Nothing worse than using a petrol pump though.

I keep the cables in the boot of my car - as I'm reversing into a charging bay, it makes the most sense. There is a so-called "frunk", a front trunk which takes up the space where an internal-combustion engine would be. It's a little awkward to open (you have to find a hidden lever under the bonnet) and it isn't waterproof. Naturally, BMW will sell you a waterproof bag for £45... FFS!

At the moment I'm just using a domestic charger, but I've got a Fast Charger being installed in my garage by the fine folk at EV Charging Solutions.

I've got a big post in the works about the state of the UK's charging infrastructure. It's a bit of a mess at the moment - but seems to be getting better.

One nice thing about the i3 is the optional REX (Range EXtender) feature. When the battery gets down to 6% charge, the petrol engine kicks in. It doesn't power the wheels directly, rather it begins to recharge the batteries.

MORE MATHS!

The petrol tank holds 9 litres (in the EU model). It can drive approximately 80 miles on a full tank.

80 miles / 9 litres = 8.9 MPL

1 mile per UK gallon = 0.22 miles per litre.

8.9 / .22 = 40MPG

That's a worse than my hybrid's 55MPG - but not massively. And, theoretically, it's only for short hops to get me to a charging station. So far I've not had cause to use the engine. Apparently it will switch on for a few minutes every so often just to ensure nothing gets clogged.

The cost of using the petrol will be roughly...

£1.26 / 8.9 = £0.14 per mile

A Word On Range Anxiety

Range Anxiety is a term coined by the petrol industry. It's supposed to convey how people worry when driving electric cars. It's nonsense.

Literally, every drive I do goes through a GPS first - so I know how many miles I'm going to travelling. Looking at my personal driving habits, it's extremely rare that I go outside an 80 mile radius. When I do, I'm travelling on motorways which have plenty of service stations - which all have charging ports. I don't know about you, but after 2 hours in a car, I'm ready to stretch my legs, have a sandwich, and take a piss - by the time I'm done the car is charged and ready to go.

If I visit a friend, I'll ask them to chuck an extension lead out of the window and trickle charge.

The excellent Zap Map shows a list of all public charging points in the UK.

Not yet quite as plentiful as petrol stations, but good enough for driving around the country. More are being installed, and more businesses are fitting power-points for their employees. For regular commuters who live within an hour's drive of work - electric cars are perfect.

Final Thoughts

This car is close to perfect for me. 90% of my car journeys are to work and back - which this can comfortably do in a single charge. As it happens, I can plug in at work - and the working day is enough to fully charge my battery. If I'm at home, I can charge overnight. If I'm working from home, I let the solar take the strain.

For those rare longer journeys, the UK has fast chargers dotted around the motorways - and the petrol engine will prevent me from being stranded by the side of the motorway.

I'm going to be saving around £1,000 per year in fuel costs. I'll admit, that does somewhat take the sting out of being gouged by BMW for their pricey extras.

It's a fun car to drive - and the smart features really do reduce the stress of commuting.

Yes, the software is naff - but you're hopefully not fiddling with it while driving. Perhaps BMW will spend some money improving it? Or opening it up for development?

Long story short? The i3 is a great half-way point between fully autonomous electric vehicles and regular petrol cars.

Why? Cost, obviously.

I've been obsessively tracking my fuel consumption using the Fuelly app.

If I'm lucky, I get around 60MPG (UK) - given my mileage, the yearly cost is around £1,350. That means that my average cost per mile is £0.104 (over the last 3 years).

Electric cars are, generally, more expensive to buy. But what are their running costs? Looking at the BMW i3 specs (the car I'm probably getting) the calculation is...

(Battery Capacity * Electricity Cost) / Miles

The battery has a 22kWh capacity, I pay around £0.12/kWh. The i3 can get around 80 miles out of the battery.

(22 * 0.12) / 80 = £0.033

So, the cost per mile is a third of what I pay for petrol. But wait! There's more!

Regular readers know that I have solar panels on the house. During summer, I can easily generate the 22kWh needed to fill the car. On the weekends - or when I work from home - I can fill the car for free!

During November - usually the worst month for solar power - the maximum I can generate is 12kWh. Of course, the minimum is a paltry 0.8kWh, which will just about power the radio!

In total, assuming I do roughly the same mileage, I'll be saving at least £900 per year. More if you factor in solar charging.

Public Charging

The fly in the ointment is the cost of public charging. For now, my work lets me plug in to a slow charger for free. If I want to charge up in a car-park or service station, I've got a small problem. Because of the UK Government's pathological fear of centralised planning faith in the power of free-market capitalism, there are several different charging providers.

Now, this in itself, isn't a problem. But each of them requires a separate subscription and smart card. There are universal power sockets - but not universal payment methods. Imagine if you had to pay a yearly fee to Esso just in case you wanted to fuel up at one of their stations.

Infuriating!

Anyway, with a service like Polar some service stations charge £7.50 for a 30 minute rapid charge. That should fill the battery up to 80%.

7.5 / (80 * 0.8) = £0.075

7p per mile. Double what I pay at home, and within touching distance of the 10.4p per mile of petrol.

That's before you add on the £20/year cost of membership to the charging network.

Frequent public charging brings the cost efficiency of an EV down slightly.

Home Charging

Ok, so there is one more cost! Most EVs will charge through a domestic plug socket. Thanks to the UK's 230V infrastructure, a regular plug will fully charge a car overnight.

Get a 7kW fast-charger, and the car can be filled to 80% in around 3 hours.

The UK's Office for Low Emission Vehicles (OLEV) provides subsidies to get fast-chargers installed at home. Generally speaking, the cost of installation is around £200.

TCO

We British are far too prudish with matters of finance, so I'm going to attempt to break from that stereotype and present some real figures about my personal costs for getting an EV.

I have a company car provided via my employers. Your sums may be different.

My current car costs me £16.03 per month in extra tax. I pay an average of £1,350.08 per year in petrol. Over a year, the total cost of ownership is £1,542.44

A fully tricked out BMW i3 with all the exciting features (Self driving! Auto parking! Magic door locks!) will cost me £62.05 per month in extra tax. Youch! It's a more expensive car, on a lower tax band.

Assuming 3.3p per mile, and the same average mileage each year, my fuel costs will be £428.39. Over a year, the total cost of ownership is £1,172.75

That's a saving of £370 per year.

In the first year, I'll have to pay around £200 if I want a faster charger fitted.

At the moment, I park on the street outside my house - my garage is used for storing all the USB cables and old bits of computer that I just can't bear to throw away. If I want my garage to get a new roof, electric doors, and generally made good - that's another £4,500.

Hmmmm.

Further Thoughts

For my commuting needs, an electric car makes total sense. The i3 has a small petrol engine which can recharge the battery if needed - doubling its range should I wish to journey further afield.

Cost wise, it's not the car itself which is the problem - it's the infrastructure to support it. At the moment, I'm quite content to park on the street - getting an EV really necessitates a working garage. Unless I want to fling an extension cord onto the pavement...

Or, I'll see if I can get a Tesla!

Here's a quick run-down of its features.

HTML5

A fairly miserable score of 268 out of 555 points on http://html5test.com/ The screen is 1280*480 with good visibility. It's slow to scroll and, even with the touchpad controller, a pain to navigate.

User Agent

It reports as this unholy mess. Chrome 15 on Windows XP. Helpful! Oh, the IP address is in Germany because - I presume - that's where BMW's proxy is. Connectivity is provided by Vodafone's 3G network.

Security

The browser kept popping up with this certificate error. I'm not sure if it's the proxy, or the browser which is causing the failure to validate certificates.

Options

There is an options menu. Cookies are blocked by default, there's a flash player! Flash! In the car! I ticked the "sound" option and visited an HTML5 sound test page. MP3 is supported. Impressively, so are Ogg and WebM!

Video

Some HTML5 video is supported - although playback is a bit jerky. Audio support is variable.

So, let's try out YouTube - the biggest video site on the planet!

Well, that's underwhelming. I wonder what is up with the Flash player on this thing.

A quick (slow) visit to Adobe shows us part of the problem -

An ancient Flash version. Which means you can expect to see a lot of things like:

Tabs

One thing that surprised me was the ability to have multiple tabs. Considering how slow the browser is, it's useful to load up a site in one, then read another tab while waiting for it to load.

Open too many tabs (3 in this case) and you get this somewhat confusing error message.

There's no obvious way to close a tab...

You can always go into your history to see what you were reading before the browser flamed out.

Headers and Proxy

A fairly sparse set of headers are sent by the UA.

The proxy is by M-Way Solutions. I'm not sure if it's the proxy, or Vodafone, but there is some severe picture compression going on:

Rendering

For regular web pages, the rendering is competent - if slow. Here's my blog:

CSS rounded corner and webfonts all work.

But there is a glaring omission. The Unicode support from the browser is atrocious. Want to view Emoji? This is what you'll see -

☹

Overall

This is a shitty browser. It's slow - and that's not the fault of the 3G network - rendering takes forever, scrolling is awkward, mouse pointer precision is poor, and has limited support for modern web technologies. Along with the frequent SSL certificate warnings, the UA is probably vulnerable to modern attacks.

If you want to pay £95 per year to browse the web while sat in a motorway service station, I suggest you buy a cheap Android tablet and a PAYG SIM. Browsing will be a lot less frustrating, and you won't have to put up with seeing this error message constantly.

But, apart from that, the i3 is a great car!